Wesizwe Platinum has completed a retrenchment exercise for the Bakubung platinum mine, where it is ramping up production starting early next year prior to a concentrator upgrade exercise.
In December, the Bakubung platinum mine was rocked by an underground sit-in protest by employees. There had been disputes with mineworkers prior to the sit-in, some who felt that they were being unfairly treated by the company over retrenchment processes by the mine.
In November last year, Wesizwe said it was pursuing negotiations pursuant to retrenchments at the Bakubung mine, which was switching to new mining methods. This was aimed at reducing operating expenditures and putting the company on a profitable path.
Now, Wesizwe has said that it has completed Section 189 negotiations with mineworkers affected by its switch to a new mining method.
“Shareholders are now advised that the Section 189 process was concluded in Q2 2024 after lengthy engagements relating to the rationale and analysis of the impact on the community,” Wesizwe said yesterday.
It had been feared that the restructuring of the mine’s mode of operations would impact as many as 345 employees.
Wesizwe said out of the 345 redundant positions, an unnamed number of employees had been laid off due to natural attrition, while other employees had been transferred to in-house vacancies. Others had opted for voluntary separation packages, the company said.
“Ultimately, only 13 employees were retrenched, of which seven of the 13 are to be absorbed by the company’s training services provider,” Wesizwe said in a statement.
The company also issued an update in relation to its operational restructuring exercise. It said although underground mining through vertical shafts had proven to be complex and was taking longer to execute, there had been progress with development of critical infrastructure geared to opening up the ore body and facilitate future stoping activities at the Bakubung mine.
“The current underground activities include the development, construction and equipping of permanent infrastructure such as ore passes, silos, workshops, permanent water and power services amongst others to support future stoping activities,” the company said.
Wesizwe’s stoping production ramp-up was now set to commence in the first quarter of 2025, following the expected completion of development of the underground critical infrastructure.
This process is envisaged to result in the company’s underground mining ramp-up reaching 83 000 tons per month. There is already some 500 000 tons of incidental ore stockpile from the on reef development activities at Bakubung.
“As soon as the plant rectification plan is completed then the concentrator ramp up will commence in Q4 2025,” explained Wesizwe.
It had faced some setbacks during hot commissioning of the concentrator plant, with certain defects identified in the plant requiring rectification.
The company had consequently appointed “an experienced team of industry experts to develop a rectification plan” and “a contract has been awarded to an experienced contractor to commence the concentrator plant rectification” plan starting in the last quarter of the current year.
Shares in Wesizwe traded 4.26% weaker in afternoon trade yesterday at R0.45.
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